Early-Warning Signals of Individual Tree Mortality Based on Annual Radial Growth.

ABSTRACT: Tree mortality is a key driver of forest dynamics and its occurrence is projected to increase in the future due to climate change. Despite recent advances in our understanding of the physiological mechanisms leading to death, we still lack robust indicators of mortality risk that could be applied at the individual tree scale. Here, we build on a previous contribution exploring the differences in growth level between trees that died and survived a given mortality event to assess whether changes in temporal autocorrelation, variance, and synchrony in time-series of annual radial growth data can be used as early warning signals of mortality risk. Taking advantage of a unique global ring-width database of 3065 dead trees and 4389 living trees growing together at 198 sites (belonging to 36 gymn

SUBMITTER: Cailleret M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6346433 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature